管理科学与工程前沿讲座（34）——肖光

时间：2026-05-22

报告人：肖光 教授

邀请人：朱晗 教授

报告题目：Consumer Awareness, Noisy Certification, and Corporate Social Responsibility under Asymmetric Information

报告时间：2026年5月27日（周三）下午14:00-15:00

报告地点：劝学楼425

主办单位：东北财经大学管理科学与工程学院
辽宁省大数据管理与优化决策重点实验室
辽宁省大数据管理决策研究生创新与学术交流中心

【报告摘要】

This paper investigates the interaction between a firm and its consumers under the consideration of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and asymmetric information. We develop a game-theoretic model in which a firm can be either socially responsible or irresponsible. Consumers cannot observe the firm's exact CSR type, but the firm can communicate its CSR type through price and a noisy third-party certification. We adopt the signaling-game framework and solve the model to derive insights. Among other results, we highlight that, due to information asymmetry, as more consumers become socially concerned or as they have a stronger willingness to reward (punish) the responsible (irresponsible) firm, the responsible firm might be worse off, whereas the irresponsible firm might be better off. On the other hand, improving the accuracy of the deployed certifications will always benefit the responsible firm but may not necessarily hurt the irresponsible firm. We also find that the consumer-oriented CSR initiatives (e.g., increasing consumers' CSR awareness or enhancing their willingness to reward/punish) may cause social and environmental damages under asymmetric information. In addition, we extend our base model to endogenize the firm's CSR engagement decision and show that combining price signaling with a reasonably accurate certification could incentivize the profit-maximizing firm to adopt CSR when there are enough consumers concerning about CSR. Our results suggest that addressing the information asymmetry issue is key to aligning consumers' goodwill with firms' responsible behaviors. Concerned parties should first exert efforts to create transparency in firms' sustainability practices before making investments to educate consumers and influence their purchasing behaviors.

【报告人简介】

Dr. Guang Xiao is an Associate Professor at Department of Logistics and Maritime Studies, Hong Kong Polytechnic University. He received his bachelor’s degrees in Applied Mathematics and Philosophy from Peking University, master degree of Operations Research from University of Delaware, and Ph.D. degree in Operations Management from Washington University in St. Louis. His research interests include supply chain risk management, operations-marketing/finance interface, socially responsible operations, etc. His research has been published in leading journals, including Management Science, Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, and Production and Operations Management.

撰稿：赵永丽   朱晗      审核：吴志樵  印明鹤      单位：管理科学与工程学院